Letter: Difficulty getting rid of rats

More specifically people with disabilities living on benefits in social housing and RATS. Have others, like me, found it very difficult to get help with getting rid of them?

I have repeatedly laid poison and set traps to no avail.

I have had the more obvious points of access sealed but now the little, or maybe, big blighters are in the cavity chewing their way into my bedroom through an electrical socket.

My landlords, Together Housing, tell me the rats are my problem. They tell me that I have to employ a person to catch the rats and deal with the electrics.

Given I pay rent for a property that they own, and the responsibility for repair is theirs, why is it that the cause of the repair if a rat does it becomes my responsibility? I would be in breach of my tenancy agreement if I damaged the property but a rat is perfectly entitled to do so.

In the Victorian era the undeserving poor, which of course included people with disabilities, were considered to be vermin, a drain on society. It looks to me as though very little has changed.

As a person who cannot afford to pay an electrician to sort out the electrics, who cannot afford to pay a rat man, my disability renders me more deserving than most to continue to share my home with vermin.